How do you guys deal with people who are needy?

Okay… at the moment, I have a group of friends who are very needy by nature. And when I say needy, I mean that they expect me to be there all the time / do things for them . And if I give them ‘no’ as an answer, they will get upset. Like for example, I am having my school break at the moment so I got myself a vacation job which takes up most of my time (bear in mind that I have to spend time with my family too). But at the same time, I have a group of friends from school (not that close to begin with) who keeps asking me to hang out . And when I say that I do not have time, they get upset and say things like ‘oh so, we are not important ?’, or things like ‘oh, so you prefer to hang out with your other friends and not us ?’ . I feel that this kind of attitude is really juvenile, but I can’t help but feel bad when they say such things.

At the same time, I feel my boyfriend is very needy too, although I’d like to think that such attitude is caused by the distance between us . He will be coming over to my country for good next June , but he keeps mentioning about ‘not being able to wait so long and expects me to fly over so we could countdown to the new year together . Unfortunately , I have a good friend’s birthday which falls on New Year’s Day itself . So I explained to him about it and he got upset , saying that I’d rather spend time at a friend’s party rather than spend time with a guy ‘who loves me’. Of course I got upset , because the reason for me wanting to celebrate the birthday of my friend’s instead , is because I think that birthdays only happen once in a year , whereas I could always go over to see him anytime .

(Anyway , we took 10 minutes to cool down and finally resolved this problem . He finally saw that he was not being understanding enough – I think!)

* takes a deep breath *

You can skip the details above , question starts here (=

I’d like to ask you guys out there . How do you guys deal with needy people ? Do you counter attack by saying things like ‘if you expect me to understand you , who is going to understand me ?’

Or even better! Any advices on how I can deal with such people ? I am very tired of taking care of so many people at once, that I don’t have time for myself!

Thank you !